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MR. ALLEN'S SPEECH 






BEFORE THE 



CONVENTION OF MINISTERS 



WORCESTER COUNTY, MASS. 



/ 



, 



MR. ALLEN'S SPEECH 

ON 

MINISTERS LEAVING A MORAL KINGDOM 

TO 

BEAR TESTIMONY AGAINST SIN; 

LIBERTY IN DANGER, 

FROM 

THE PUBLICATION OF ITS PRINCIPLES; 

THE 

CONSTITUTION A SHIELD FOR SLAVERY; 

AND 

THE UNION 

BETTER THAN 

FREEDOM AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



BOSTON 



PUBLISHED BY ISAAC KNAPP, 

No. 25 Cornliill. 

183S. 



>htfz$ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1838, by 

ISAAC KNAPP, 
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. 






Harden & Kimball, Printers, 

No. 3 School Street. 



Having been requested by many to publish the speech delivered by me, 
at the Convention of ministers of Worcester county, at Worcester, on the 
16th of January last, in favor of the adoption of the Report on Slavery, 
presented by Rev. Mr. Peabody, I offer to the public, and particularly to my 
brethren in the ministry, the following pages, as that speech revised, with 
additions. 

GEO. ALLEN. 

Shrewsbury, March, 1838. 



SPEECH. 



Mr. President : 

I read the deep interest taken in the question before this 
Convention, in the general aspect of its members, and in the solemn 
stillness of the respectable assembly which throng the place of our 
deliberations ; and, if I do not greatly mistake, I find in this hall 
no unfaithful index of the interest felt in the large community in 
which Divine Providence has cast our lot. I cannot, nor would I, 
disguise the deep feelings of my own heart which have brought me 
hither, which the progress of this debate calls forth, and which look 
forward to the vote that shall be taken on the momentous subject 
of slavery. 

I could wish that, while we all profess to have the same deep 
sense of the sin of slavery, there might be equal harmony in making 
public, through this Convention, the sentiments which we privately 
entertain. This unanimous public expression of our sentiments it 
seems evident we may not expect, and, as appearances are such, I 
hope no member will feel the less free to declare his thoughts to 
the world because others may think it expedient to withhold theirs. 

Before, however, the question of adopting the Report of your 
Committee shall be taken, I wish to offer some remarks on the ehief 



objections urged, for the rejection of that Report, against our taking 
a public, and particularly a united stand against slavery as it exists 
in the United States. If, in so doing, I shall take up more time 
than is allowed by the rule of this Convention, I shall throw myself 
on its indulgence, thinking it to be economy of time for one to say 
what, without this indulgence, would probably be said by several. 
The first objection which I shall take notice of is that a minister, 

9 

in publicly expressing his sentiments on slavery, leaves his appro- 
priate sphere of duty. I should defer greatly to the cautious and 
experienced sagacity of him* who has added to this objection the 
weight of his venerated years, were I disposed to neglect the in- 
spired lesson which in my early days I often heard from bis lips, 
and which has been signally exemplified in his life, to "call no man 
master on earth." It is said, in so many words applied to the ques- 
tion before us, " the moral kingdom is the sphere in which minis- 
ters ought to move," and, to enforce this precept, the language of our 
divine Master is cited, "my kingdom is not of this world." It is not 
to the precept, nor is it to the authority cited in support of it that I 
object; but it is to the new relations which are here given them 
— it is to the exclusion of the momentous subject of slavery from 
the concerns of a moral kingdom — it is to the fact that the language 
of our Saviour is used as authority to keep us from bearing our 
public testimony against a sin so great and glaring that all are con- 
strained to see and acknowledge it. 

The history of our Saviour's statement respecting his kingdom 
is brief, and bears forcibly on the question before us. When our 
Lord was brought, by the malice of his enemies, before Pilate, and 
was asked by him whether he were the king of the Jews, he an- 

* Mr. Allen sat, for many years, under the ministry of the member who 
offered the objection. 



swered, " my kingdom is not of this world ; " and gave, as proof of 
this, the fact that it was not maintained by physical force. Pilate 
again asked him if he were a king ; to which question our Lord 
replied in the affirmative, adding, both as confirmation and expla- 
nation of his regal office, " to this end was I born, and for this 
cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the 
truth." Nor are we left in doubt respecting the truths to which he 
testified ; that, while they related to the future and invisible world, 
they related also to the corruption and oppression of this ; for our 
Lord had told his familiar disciples, in the early part of his minis- 
try, the cause of that malice which at length brought him to the 
tribunal of Pilate, saying, " me the world hateth, because I testify 
of it that its works are evil." 

Though we follow our Lord a great way off, I yet inquire what 
" cause " has brought us hither ? What " end " do we aim at ? Is 
it not " to express our sentiments on the subject of slavery ? " 
Is it not to "testify" our belief that slavery is an "evil work?" Is 
it not to bear our joint testimony against a sin of daring and appal- 
ling magnitude ? And who shall say that, in so doing, we leave a 
moral kingdom — that we wander out of our sphere ? Or shall 
such an assertion, by whomsoever, or how confidently soever made, 
deter any one from the purpose contemplated by the call of this 
Convention ? Shall it create a moment's misgiving ? Are we not 
manifestly within the limits of our office ? Would it not be wan- 
dering from the path of duty, if, for such cause, we should reject 
the Eeport of your committee and leave our purpose unaccom- 
plished ? 

I know, sir, that, to give force to the objection, it is said, the sub- 
ject of slavery is political, and is connecting itself with the move- 
ments of political parties. This I do not altogether deny, though 



• 8 

I do not by any means admit its political, to be its exclusive or 
most prominent character. The objection is insinuating and plau- 
sible, but it seems to me to be destitute of that soundness without 
which it cannot have weight. This great subject, which now so 
much and so justly occupies the public mind, is of a mixed charac- 
ter. It partakes of morals and of politics. It is essentially moral : 
it is incidentally political. It has become more or less interwoven 
with the politics of the day, and some political aspirants, it may be, 
are desirous that, like all other great subjects which attract the 
public mind, it should subserve their private interests. But this 
fact, if it be a fact, does not change the original character of the 
subject before us. It does not make it any the less a moral sub- 
ject, and thereby throw it out of the sphere of direct moral influ- 
ence from the ministers of a moral kingdom. If it is in itself a 
moral subject, the floating incidents of politics cannot jostle it from 
its sphere. 

It is of the very nature of political ambition to hunt for influence 
in all quarters, and to throw itself, if possible, on all great currents 
of the public mind. But this fact does not change a minister's 
position in respect to the commands of God, and the duties of men 
to their Maker and to each other. It neither annihilates nor con- 
tracts the sphere of his duty. If that sphere undergoes any 
change whatever, it is an enlargement rather than a diminution : 
at least, the fact that any great sin, in addition to its accustomed 
and steady interests, finds a new ally in the interests of political 
ambition, is a new demand on the minister of Christ that he the 
more sternly rebuke it. What does the principle assumed in the 
objection amount to? It is this, that any sin- whatever may take 
shelter under the wing of politics, and that, having gained a place 
there, the minister of truth may not touch it — may not speak to it 



nor of it. It is a principle that goes to defeat the purpose of the 
Christian ministry ; a principle that, if carried out, would annihi- 
late the kingdom of Christ, and spread, without limit, the empire 
of Satan. What are the practical details into which this principle 
would lead us ? Let it be once but well settled, and it would have 
strength enough to demolish every pulpit in the land, and the last 
sound of the gospel would die away from the earth. What sin 
would not rally its friends, organize them politically, and trench, 
one after another, on a moral kingdom till the whole should be 
partitioned into the kingdom of this world. 

We find, at least in one place, a party formed, not of large di- 
mensions at present, but yet an organized party large enough to be 
watched, whose aim is, among other things, to abolish the institu- 
tion of marriage — to put asunder what God hath joined together; 
to do that, which, if done, would break up the foundations of 
society and let loose the bond that ties the world together. That 
party is political, and carries whatever of force it can gather to the 
decision of the ballot-box. Is the ballot-box therefore the ark of 
refuge for pollution ? Does the minister of Christ thereby lose his 
holy function ? May he no longer publish the law of God or array 
its denunciations against the sin of licentiousness? 

A party has sprung up, that may possibly increase, who wish to 
raise themselves, by unrighteous means, above the level to which 
profligacy of morals has sunk them. It is by bringing down those 
above them and throwing all on a level to-day where all cannot be 
to-morrow. They call, as loudly as even their impudence yet 
dares, for a division of other men's property for the common be- 
hoof. Give them their wish and they would empty the coffers of 
the enterprising and frugal merchant and mechanic, and cut up the 
farm of the thrifty yeoman, to scramble in the common stock and 



10 

supply the wants of idleness and prodigality. They too are poli- 
ticians. They go, with all the troop they can muster, to the polls. 
They are politicians of the fiercest school, such men as would have 
graced the cohorts of Catiline, clamorous from morning till night 
for the honest earnings of prudent industry. Does their greedi- 
ness for other men's gains find protection under the cover of pol- 
itics ? Have they clamored down the law of God at the ballot- 
box? Have they, by political concert, shut out the ministration of 
the command, " thou shall not covet anything that is thy neigh- 
bor's ? " 

It cannot justly be said that the question is affected by the pres- 
ent number of the party which is thus political. Present dimen- 
sions may grow. The actual and the possible may be one. Be- 
sides, the principle of the objection is universal, and covers all 
dimensions. And who, in either of these instances of political 
organization, would not break through such a theory to save a land 
from plunder and pollution? Who, that cares for the rights and 
welfare of men, would have the hardihood to deny to a Christian 
ministry the duty, as far as in it lies, singly or by scores, to fore- 
stall the growth of such a party, or, if already great, to level 
against it the whole artillery of a moral kingdom ? Whoever else 
would, he who has raised this objection would not. 

And what is slavery but a system, on a scale of fearful magni- 
tude, of rapine and licentiousness? It does not, indeed, throw pri- 
vate property, the hard earnings of individuals, into the common 
stock. It seeks not to equalize the condition of men as to prop- 
erty, but to create, by the sternest oppression, the utmost possible 
difference among them. Nor does it limit this difference to mere 
property. It extends it to every circumstance of being, to the pow- 
ers and aspirations of the immortal mind. It keeps back, year 



11 

after year to the last sand of life, the earnings of the laborer that 
hath reaped down the fields. It allows its subject neither house 
nor land, neither wife nor children, neither body nor soul. 

The subject of slavery, then, whatever may be said of its politi- 
cal relations, is fraught with morals. It comprehends the strongest 
and the holiest obligations. We cannot throw a glance upon it 
without seeing how intimate is its connection with all that makes 
up the law and the prophets, the judgments and the mercies of 
God. In this view of the question, the minister of Christ, so far 
from being barred out of, is shut up to the duty of proclaiming the 
testimony of God against oppression. If because the subject of 
slavery is of a mixed character, or, rather, may be viewed and 
acted upon in two aspects, it proves anything for the objection, it 
proves too much. If because a question is partly of morals and 
partly of politics, it is argued that a minister may not touch the 
part that is moral, with equal force may it be argued that a states- 
man may not touch the part that is political because of the part 
that is moral. On the principle of the objection, if either, by so 
doing goes out of his sphere, the other departs from his, and the 
great question, of more than a nation's concern, is pent up within 
a magic circle, over whose limits neither prophet nor people is 
suffered to pass. 

But, after all, the Report of your committee regards the subject 
of slavery only in its moral aspect and relations. This is its direct 
aim. It has no object beyond or aside from this. It proposes no 
political action. None is more sensible than we that a minister 
has nothing to gain, either to himself or to his mission, from the 
ambitious strife of political party : and, if we have anything to 
lose by it, I trust we are prepared to suffer loss rather than forego 
the plain duty of our calling, in respect to the subject which has 



12 

brought us together, or in respect to any other subject. Should 
prejudices be industriously awakened against us ; should evil sur- 
misings be whispered in the ear in closets, or whined abroad from 
the house-tops ; should jealousies be untiringly fomented by such 
as are skillful in turning to their own account the ignorance, the 
credulity, or the base passions of others ; should any or all of 
these weapons press upon us to trench upon our calling, I trust 
that, cost what it may, it will only make us bolder in pressing the 
claims of God and urging the rights and duties of men. 

The theory offered as an obstacle to our acting on the subject 
before us, having no authority in reason, finds no support from the 
holy scriptures, or from the history of the reformations which have 
been wrought since the sacred canon was completed. I the more 
earnestly call attention to this point, because we are here gravely 
assured that, in acting, as ministers, on a subject which so involves 
politics, we act " without a precedent," an assertion which, coming 
from any responsible quarter, would be strange, but which, coming 
from the source it does, is passing strange. 

Looking back into the distant ages of the prophets, we find that 
they were commissioned to denounce, with unsparing severity, sins 
cherished even by the throne, identified with the reigning policy 
of successive kings, and diffused like leaven throughout the whole 
lump of society. Nor did they fail to utter terrible denunciations 
against the very sin, though in a less appalling form, which it 
seems we may not publicly touch, lest, in so doing, we move out 
of our proper sphere. I know it may be said that the Jewish 
government was peculiar, that it was a theocracy, and that the 
prophets had a special warrant for the course which they pursued. 
Admit all this, and what does it prove ? It shows only what were 
the view and will of God respecting sins which can have but one 



13 

character, whatever may he the form or administration of gov- 
ernment, and however commissioned they may he who hear the 
testimony of the Lord. 

Coming down to the period when the theocracy so called was 
virtually supplanted, when Judea was reduced to a tributary prov- 
ince of the imperial power of Rome, what was the example of Him 
whose saying it is, " my kingdom is not of this world," and who 
both circumscribed and illumined the sphere in which his minis- 
ters should move ? In the midst of a corrupt and perverse public 
sentiment respecting the institution of marriage, against the settled 
policy of his nation, and the will of those whose authority was yet 
suffered to linger out a decrepid life, our divine Master undertook 
to reinstate that fallen institution in its original purity and benefi- 
cence. 

When, in obedience to the command of their risen Lord, the 
apostles of Christ went forth and preached everywhere the gospel 
of the kingdom which is not of this world, in the face of persecu- 
tion they preached against " domestic institutions " wrought with 
subtle care into the very frame-work of civil government, and 
guarded with all the jealousy of despotic and vindictive power. 
Even in fierce and tumultuous Athens, where idolatry was rife 
almost beyond belief, where it had, from the beginning, been the 
state's great care, Paul asserted and proved the being and attri- 
butes of God who made the world and all things therein, and of 
one blood all nations of men. He disputed in the market-place 
daily with them that met with him, and called to repentance the 
idle and excitable multitude congregated on Mars' hill, and the 
magistrate himself in whose presence he stood there arraigned as 
a setter forth of false gods. 

What were the battles which, in the sixteenth century, Luther 



14 

waged in Germany, in behalf of all men and for all time, but 
battles against political power in its true name, and the same power 
cloaked under the disguise of spiritual domination. When the 
triple crown of Leo X and the imperial diadem of Charles V were 
leagued against the reformation of institutions long wedded to the 
state ; when the political interests both of Rome and the empire 
were thwarted by the principles of the Reformation ; when those 
high powers were bent with their united strength to force that 
obstacle out of the path of their political career ; when, for this 
purpose, the edict of the emperor, framed by the confederate prin- 
ces of Germany, was sent forth with the thunder of the Vatican 
against the devoted life of the reformer, did he accommodate his 
embassy to the wants or the threats of political power? Did lie 
fling up his commission and slink back from the lowering storm 
into the cell of his deserted cloister ? Had he bowed to the theory 
that morals must submit to politics, the glorious light that broke 
forth on Germany and on other parts of Europe, and which has 
shed its beams so widely and benignly on this land, had been 
quenched as it rose out of the thick darkness, and the world had 
been palled in a deeper and more settled night than that which 
had so long and gloomily hung over it. 

And what was the theory, what the practice of the pilgrim 
ministers of New-England ? Read their theory in their privations 
and sufferings endured for their unbending resistance to the en- 
croachment of civil power on natural and inalienable rights. And 
who, that is familiar with the early history of the colony of Mas- 
sachusetts, does not know that wherever a pulpit was set up, the 
sanctuary rang with the notes of civil as well as religious liberty. 
I do not say that their views of either civil or religious liberty 
were always right. I rather wonder that they did so much which 



15 

deserves our gratitude and our imitation — that they had so far the 
start of the world, encumbered as they were with its habits and 
examples of tyranny. Whatever any may deny to them, all will 
concede that, having suffered much in defence of the liberties of 
mankind, they did much, and with great precision of forecast, to 
establish those liberties on a foundation which coming ages might 
not shake. Nor will it be denied that whatever they accomplished 
in behalf of freedom was done by the strength of the principle that 
morals, including the natural rights of man, are the basis of civil 
government, and that to allow the foundation to be undermined is 
to bring into ruin all that is reared upon it. Nor were their efforts 
vain. The principles of liberty which they personally defended, 
at such sacrifice, which they were so anxious to keep alive in the 
mass of society, and in which they incorporated the infant mind, 
came safely down to the period when the American Revolution 
began another era in the history of mankind. That revolution 
was the opening of a great political drama, which we believe will 
end only with the political regeneration of the world. And how 
far would that political revolution have turned, had not the ministry 
of New-England put its shoulder to the wheel ? To this question 
let the Coopers, and the Chaunceys, the Thatchers, the Mayhews, 
and the Lathrops* of our metropolis in its better days, reply. Let 
those tones of fearless instruction and fervent intercession in be- 
half of civil liberty which rang from almost every pulpit in New- 
England, reply. Let the venerated names of Dwight, Trumbull, 
Spring, Robbins, Thaxter, Allen, and other chaplains in the army 
of the Revolution, reply. Though dead they speak : nor will 

* These distinguished ministers of Boston were, with others, intimate 
counselors with Adams, Otis, Hancock, and Warren, and eminently instru- 
mental in bringing on the Revolution. 



16 

their voices cease to be heard on the hills and in the vales of New- 
England, till the spirit of Independence shall forsake the soil wet 
with the first blood of her martyrs. 

What thought our political fathers on this subject ? To this 
question they give no vague reply. Let me cite a passage from 
the prologue to that drama of which I have just spoken. It was 
uttered by that provincial Congress of which John Hancock was 
President, Benjamin Lincoln, Secretary, and Samuel Adams and 
Joseph Hawley were master-spirits. In their session at Cambridge, 
December 6, 1774, but a few months before the first blood of the 
Revolution was spilt, they addressed, by special proclamation, the 
ministers of the colony of Massachusetts in these words : 

" In a day like this, when all the friends of civil and religious 
liberty are exerting themselves to deliver this country from its 
present calamities, we cannot but place great hope in an order of 
men who have ever distinguished themselves in their country's 
cause ; and do therefore recommend to the ministers of the gospel 
in the several towns and other places in this colony, that they as- 
sist us in avoiding that dreadful slavery with which we are now 
threatened." 

Was there no response to this call ? Hear it. It comes in that 
solemn pause between the fight of Lexington and the battle in 
which Warren consecrated, with his blood, the heights of Charles- 
town to the liberties of mankind. It was uttered in Convention, 
and was in these words : 

" To the Hon. Joseph Warren, Esq., President of the Provincial 
Congress of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. 

" Sir : We, the pastors of the Congregational churches of Mas- 
sachusetts Bay, in our present annual convention, beg leave to ex- 
press the grateful sense we have of the regard shown by the hon- 
orable Provincial Congress to us, and the encouragement * they 
have been pleased to afford to our assembly as a body this day. 

* The Congress adjourned to accommodate the Convention with a place 
for meeting. 



17 

" Deeply impressed with a sympathy for the distress of our mueh 
injured and oppressed country, we are not a little relieved in be- 
holding the representatives of the people, chosen by their free and 
unbiassed suffrage, now met to concert measures for their relief and 
defence., in whose wisdom and integrity, under the smiles of Divine 
Providence, we cannot but express our entire confidence. 

" As it has been found necessary to raise an army for the com- 
mon safety, and our brave countrymen have so willingly offered 
themselves to this hazardous service, we are not insensible of the 
vast burden that their necessary maintenance must induce upon 
the people ; we therefore cannot forbear, upon this occasion, to offer 
our services to the public, and to signify our readiness, with the con- 
sent of our several congregations, to officiate, by rotation, as chap- 
lains to the army. 

" We devoutly commend the Congress and our brethren in arms 
to the guidance and protection of that Providence who, from the 
first settlement of the country, has so remarkably appeared for the 
preservation of its civil and religious rights." 

The call, sir, upon ministers for aid in the revolutionary struggle 
was not confined to the colony of Massachusetts. The Congress 
of the United States, at their session in May, 1778, published 
an address, signed by Henry Laurens, President, to the people of 
the United States, in which they set forth the condition of the 
country at that crisis, its dangers and its hopes, stating the con- 
nection between liberty and the general interests of men, and 
calling for the united and persevering efforts of the people to 
maintain their rights. In order to give certain and more extensive 
effect to their address, they added to it a resolution, in which we 
see evidence of their belief that neither the ministry nor the sanc- 
tuary were too sacred to entertain and aid the cause of civil lib- 
erty. The resolution was as follows : 

" Resolved, That it be recommended to ministers of the gospel, 
of all denominations, to read, or cause to be read, immediately after 
divine service, the above address to the inhabitants of the United 
States of America, in their respective churches and chapels and 
other places of religious worship." 



18 

So far were the provincial or the continental Congress from 
thinking that the subject of human rights was no concern of a 
spiritual kingdom, that they would have preferred the sentiment 
contained in the resolutions of the town of Petersham, in this 
county, adopted January 4, 1773, one of which meets directly the 
objection before us. It is this : 

" Resolved, That it is the opinion of this town, that a despotic, 
arbitrary government is the kingdom of this world as set forth in 
the New Testament, and is diametrically opposed to the establish- 
ment of Christianity in a society, and has a direct tendency to sink 
a people into a profound state of ignorance and irreligion, and that, 
if we have an eye to our own and posterity's happiness, not only 
in this world, but in the world to come, it is our duty to oppose 
such a government." 

And yet, Mr. President, what was the " despotic arbitrary gov- 
ernment " which our fathers so much feared ? What was the 
"dreadful slavery" which they so carefully sought to avoid, that 
they called for aid upon the whole ministry of our land ? That 
despotism, that slavery was unshackled freedom compared with 
the horrible bondage to which two millions of our countrymen aTe 
at this moment subjected, and against which we may not bear our 
testimony, lest, by so doing, we forsake our appointed sphere, we 
desert a spiritual kingdom ! 

I now call your attention to an extract from a sermon* delivered 
in 1772, which, it seems to me, bears with no little force on the 
objection before us. 

"As my audience at this General Convention consists of clergy- 
men, legislators and the principal inhabitants of America, I shall 
address the different classes. 

* This extract is taken from the Massachusetts Spy, of February 18, 1773. 
It was copied into that paper from the Providence Gazette, of January 2, of 
the same year. In this paper it was published as an extract from a sermon 



19 

" My brethren in the ministry, our work is always great and infi- 
nitely important, and in this evil day the voice of wisdom cries 
loudly to ministers to watch and labor with double diligence and 
ardor for the souls of men. We are bound by the command of 
God to watch for the temporal as well as spiritual salvation of the 
people. As our duty with regard to the latter is often urged from 
the desk, I shall chiefly urge the former. It is a truth not to be 
concealed, my brethren, that we are verily and notoriously guilty 
of great omission of duty. We have not, in these wicked times, 
borne constant and faithful testimony against the growing sins in 
the land — against tyranny and unfaithfulness in rulers; we have 
been afraid of offending them ; the fear of man has brought us 
into the snare of sin : cursed be he that doeth the work of the 
Lord deceitfully. Doth not this curse belong to some of us ? We 
see tyranny advancing, which is the parent of all manner of abom- 
inations, and have we cried aloud to warn the people against the 
dreadful evil ? No ; we are many of us guilty, guilty, guilty ; 
and I believe the anger of God is kindled against us for our great 
neglect of duty in this matter. If our consciences condemn us, 
let us now engage earnestly and double our diligence in the cause 
of freedom and godliness. Let us teach our people not only in 
public, but from house to house, warning every man and beseech- 
ing every man to forsake every evil way, to practice holiness, and 
to support freedom and justice against growing oppression and tyr- 
anny. And as there are but few men of letters in country towns 
who are acquainted with the history of mankind and the destruc- 
tion that tyranny has made in the world, we are bound, by the love 
of God and man, to set apart a day to deliver a lecture to the peo- 
ple of our charge, upon government and the rights of the people. 
This is an important duty, which every one, who is an ambassador 
from Him who came into the world to make us free indeed, ought 
immediately to put in practice. My dear brethren, this is a most 
weighty concern ; for, as far as means are connected with the end, 
the eternal salvation of millions- may depend on the preservation 

"lately delivered in a neighboring town." The sermon was, probably, 
preached to the General Convention of Rhode-Island, in August, 1772, whilst 
the General Assembly of that colony was in session at Newport, then 
" largely engaged in commerce, and visited from various parts of the coun- 
try for purposes of trade " — "a place to which a great many of the wealthy 
and higher classes of the community resorted, from the other colonies, dur- 
ing the summer months, as at this day, though in much smaller numbers, 
from other States." 



20 

of freedom ! As tyranny always produces wickedness, we know 
not where its dreadful effects may end. I know it is often sug- 
gested that ministers of the gospel have nothing to do in civil af- 
fairs ; but as I know this suggestion came from the father of lies, 
and is big with ruin to mankind, let us say to all opposers of truth 
and righteousness, the Lord rebuke thee, and go on stedfast in the 
name of the Lord, until we have built up the kingdom of liberty 
and righteousness in the world. Thus let us be faithful unto death, 
and the King eternal will give us a crown of glory in his kingdom 
of liberty and love. 

" I will now address the legislators and gemtlemen in civil life. 
Brethren, I bless God that tyranny has not yet shut my mouth nor 
your ears ; that Ave may once more speak to each other of temporal 
and spiritual salvation. Let us work whilst life lasts, for time and 
death make rapid speed and will soon hurry us off the stage. 
Therefore what our hand findeth to do, let us do it with all our 
might, for we must soon bid the world farewell. The great busi- 
ness of life for every man is to promote the glory of God and the 
happiness of mankind ; let this be the employment of our life, and 
death will be a passage to glory. My brethren, we live in an evil 
day; tyranny and vice, inseparable companions, make rapid pro- 
gress and threaten universal ruin: therefore let the friends of God 
and man make a solemn stand against these fiends, and, in the 
name of the Most High, go forth against his and our enemies. 

"' The same spirit that dictates the objection against ministers in- 
structing the people in politics, says that none but ministers should 
instruct the ignorant or wicked in religion, and thus, by the devices 
of Satan and the folly of men, we are likely to have little or no 
religion or liberty in the world ; but the command of God binds 
all men, of every denomination, to support liberty and religion, and 
releases none from the work. We are all instructed in the book 
of reason, conscience, revelation : let us now obey their commands 
and press forward in the race of glory, for our work is infinitely 
important, our moments but few, and death will soon stop our pur- 
suit ! Let not the fear of man, the love of gold, the sound of honor, 
bribe or delude us. May we not account life itself dear, if we can 
secure to the present and to future generations the unsullied glory 
of virtue and freedom. If from right principles we can do this, we 
shall reap the fruit of our labors in His presence where is fullness 
of joy through an eternity of ages to come. Let us all, in our va- 
rious spheres of life, unite with sacred ardor in promoting the honor 
of God and the welfare of our fellow-men, and be invincible to the 
ungodly enemies of freedom and virtue. Then will the eternal 
God of love, who delighteth in the happiness of his creatures, shine 
upon us in time, and crown us with glory in eternity." 



21 

Such, Mr. President, were the politics, such the morals of our 
fathers. It was this spontaneous intimacy of morals and politics, 
it was this agreement of statesmen and divines, it was this inviola- 
ble harmony of truth and freedom that began, carried forward, and 
gloriously completed the American Revolution. Liberty was then 
a high-souled principle ; it was a holy sentiment ; it was a triple 
bond of duty to self, to mankind, and to God, and, being such, God 
crowned it with glory and honor. Liberty dissociated from religion 
is divided against herself; and never, while these heaven-matched 
influences are divorced from each other, never, while their union 
is not cherished in the hearts of the people, will liberty take to 
herself her great power and accomplish her great work for the 
happiness of mankind. Blessed be God that lofty, heaven-com- 
muning spirit has not utterly forsaken our land. Since the fathers 
fell asleep what have we their children seen ? We have no need 
to go down below the horizon of memory to see on the question 
before us a light to lighten the nations. We are just passing 
through a revolution which, though not a few " cast ominous con- 
jecture on the whole success," has, by the benificence of its results, 
commanded the respect of all, and the earnest good-will of many 
who, in its beginning, thought some of its movers had wandered 
darkly from the sphere of religion, to disturb the independent and 
well-adjusted system of politics. Need I remind any that the 
temperance revolution, at its beginning, and for a while after, 
met, at almost every turn, the same objection which would now 
bring us to a stand, stifle the voice which our hearts are beginning 
to utter, and send us back to our homes, to be, as ministers, forever 
mute on a subject vital to the interests of our whole country, and 
blended with all that makes up the highest duty and lasting wel- 
fare of man ? It was earnestly and strenuously contended that the 



22 

mbject of temperance was exclusively political, that it was in the 
hands of the State, that the State had given 10 the seller and the 
drinker of a subtle and all-desolating poison the holy shield of law. 
Efforts most strenuous were made to bring the subject of temper- 
ance directly into the channel of party politics, for the very pur- 
pose often of stifling the pulpit and throwing back the wheel of 
that advancing cause. The result, however, was a triumph of 
moral power over opinions and feelings that took shelter behind 
the law, and claimed that the pulpit and other means of forming 
public sentiment should be silent, till, in some mysterious way, the 
law should undergo a change ! I might here cite the reiterated 
testimony of ministerial bodies of almost every denomination, in 
every part of the country, against intemperance, and in favor of 
the revolutionary movements which have delivered so many from 
slavery to that vice ; but the leading facts of the temperance revolu- 
tion are so fresh in the memories of all, that I content myself with 
having barely suggested them to your notice, persuaded as I am 
that your personal intimacy with that enterprise will more than 
supply any deficiency of statement by me. 

Before closing my remarks on the chief objection urged against 
the adoption of the Report of your Committee, let me advert to 
events which, by their identity in principle and measures, shed a 
clear and full light on the question before us. I allude to the abo- 
lition of the slave-trade and the subsequent abolition of slavery by 
the Parliament of Great Britain. Both of these acts were wrung 
from the civil arm by the resolute and persevering energy of moral 
principle. The contests were long and severe, and so connected 
were political interests and feelings with the question of abolishing 
those evils, that all moral influences which could be brought to 
bear upon it, were put in requisition. The ministry was not 



23 

silent. The pulpit thundered with denunciations of the abomina- 
ble traffic and the abominable despotism. Ministers labored in the 
study, in the sanctuary, and often from town to town, throughout 
the kingdom, to aid in kindling, keeping alive and spreading that 
flame before which the sin of slavery was scorched and consumed. 
Nor did they always speak singly. The sin was denounced in 
the largest conventions of the clergy. Associations, conferences, 
presbyteries and synods sent forth a solemn voice and ceased not 
to lift it up till the work of deliverance was done. I know not 
whether the alarm of ecclesiastical interference with political ques- 
tions was raised, but, if so, it was then and there, as it will be 
here, raised in vain. Men came forward to the great work of 
freedom promiscuously and by religious classes. Says Granville 
Sharpe, chairman of the Committee of the London Society for 
promoting the abolition of the slave-trade, in a letter dated Febru- 
ary 28, 1788, just half a century ago, to the President^ of the 
Pennsylvania Society for promoting the abolition of slavery and 
the relief of free negroes unlawfully held in bondage, 

" The clergy of the established church in many parts, have tes- 
tified their zeal in the common cause. The Presbyterians, Inde- 
pendents, and Baptists have petititioned collectively. The attempts 
to retrieve the national character and assert the common rights of 
nature, have awakened the attention and excited the good wishes 
of people of all descriptions." 

Sir, the best part of the history of this land and of the world is 
luminous with the fact that the vindication of morals is the vindi- 
cation of human rights, and that without the assertion of these 
rights those morals cannot be maintained. On the subject of a 
minister's duty in this matter, there is, to some extent, a looseness 

* Dr. Franklin was President, and Dr. Rush was Secretary of the Society. 



24 

of thought not creditable to the general intelligence with which it 
is sometimes associated. The objection which is here urged is a 
restraint on religion and liberty. It is putting a yoke on our necks 
which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear. It has no 
authority in reason : it is not written in the oracles of God : it is 
not even the tradition of the elders : it has come newly up : surely 
I did not learn it when I sat at the feet of Gamaliel. The ques- 
tion of slavery, which must ere long be settled for the well-being 
or for the curse of this land, is one of those leading moral questions 
from which the minister of the gospel cannot keep away, without 
so far disowning his allegiance to God, and forsaking the welfare 
of man. No moral question of greater breadth or more practical 
importance will ever claim the attention of the mind, the conscience 
and the heart of this nation. It is a moral question of vast magni- 
tude not only as it concerns the rights and the condition of the 
present millions in bondage, and their more numerous descendants, 
who, unless the question shall be soon adjusted, will wear a heav- 
ier chain, but on account of the corruption which slavery spreads 
among the white population of the States where it is cherished, the 
licentiousness which it brands on the face of that section of the 
country, the intolerant and ruthless temper which it breeds there, 
and the influence which those States must necessarily impart to the 
character of this nation. Compared with the permanent interest 
involved in the question of slavery, the fiscal and other political 
questions, which now perplex and agitate the country, are as bub- 
bles on a breaking wave. Let these questions be settled as they 
may, the elastic enterprise of intelligent freedom will lift its head 
high and serene above the clashing tumult of the storm. Should 
the most alarmed apprehension be realized, should the -wings of 
commerce be clipped, and the hope of toil languish, should the 



genius of our country pine in sackcloth over the desolation of un- 
blest counsels, time would replume those wings, revive that hope, 
repair those ravages, and deck with the bloom of health and the 
robe of joy her who sat in garments of sorrow : the next genera- 
tion would not know the calamity of this, or would know it only 
as a beacon light whose gleams would warn them of the rocks 
where others' hopes had perished. Not such is the question of 
slavery. Let the question now raised be dropped, to be taken up 
by the next generation, and whatever difficulties now seem to per- 
plex it would be multiplied, and that generation on whose hands 
its additional weight should be flung would criminate its predeces- 
sor and be more likely than the present to feel as if slavery were 
entailed upon it as a burden not to be thrown off, but to remain the 
growing curse of one generation after another. 

The question of slavery, as are all moral questions, is vital both 
to temporal and spiritual interests. But if I might appeal to mere 
temporal interest on a broad scale, losing sight of those obligations 
which it is the province of interest to press on the attention and 
lead into the heart, it appears to me as if that alone should be 
enough to waken the most solemn thoughts of our country. But 
men often seem as if fated to look only on the present, or to regard 
the present and the future as one. Events which roll on by laws 
as fixed as those which govern the tides, seem as if riveted to dis- 
tant stations. Present interests of narrow dimensions are brought 
so near the eye as to eclipse the brightest light of heaven. Men 
seem to think that the relations of the white and the colored popu- 
lation of this country will always continue as they are, whilst the 
foresight of a just God has been continually employed to change 
those relations, and his goodness has given neither sleep to its eyes 
nor slumber to its eyelids, that it might forewarn men of the issue 



2G 

of his righteous providence. That population which is now held in 
abject bondage, instead of being two and a half millions, will, in a 
few years of a nation's life, equal the whole present population of our 
country. And what chain shall be strong enough to hold down in 
the dust fifteen millions of people, the bone and sinew of that por- 
tion of the land which they shall inhabit, men incited by that sym- 
pathy which, with the suddenness and the glow of electric fire, 
shall run through every bosom by the circuit of a common chain ? 
Let stern necessity strengthen as it will the fetters of such a popu- 
lation, situated as it will be, and its giant strength will, when once 
moved, snap them as threads of tow. When such an event shall 
come, the doom will fall not only on that part of the land which 
has more directly and obviously trespassed on the just laws of 
God, but on that other part which has consented to be more than a 
silent accomplice in the guilt. While this doom, with all its 
lengthened preparation, with all the suddenness of impassioned 
energy, with all the elation of the first consciousness of power, and 
with all the vengeance of accumulated wrongs, will deal out its 
blind fury on all interests of the heart within the reach of its 
implacable arm, the blow will shake the whole land with fearful 
vibrations ; the steady enterprise of freedom will stagger at the 
shock; the wheel, the loom, the multiplied implements of industry 
will pause in sad amazement, and fall in terrified homage before 
the righteous retribution of God. If, then, the minister of a spirit- 
ual kingdom may not plead for the oppressed, if he may not fer- 
vently, and before the world, singly or associated, respond to the 
call of humanity, if he is to be silenced and driven off by the voice 
of political party, from what source of influence may be expected 
the rescue of millions from the most atrocious oppression, and our 
country from the judgments of that God who will vindicate his 
government from such outrage on his subjects ? 



27 

But I hear a voice which admonishes me that this is a Conven- 
tion ! a Convention ! And what of it ? It is not the number of 
persons surely, who declare their sentiments, that makes a declara- 
tion liable to just objection. The question on any subject will not, 
with a reasonable man, be, who, or how many speak ? but, what 
is spoken ? The inquiry of such an one will be, are the declared 
sentiments just ? Are they for or against liberty? Do they arro- 
gate exclusive power either to individuals or to distinct classes of 
men ? Do they deny, or do they vindicate the rights of men, the 
principles of universal and inalienable liberty ? These are the 
questions which intelligent and honest men will ask, and on their 
answer, for one, I am willing to stand or fall. 

And here, Mr. President, it is not out of place to say, that it is 
the privilege of the ministers of this county, beyond most others, 
to live in a community justly characterized by intelligence and by 
that independence of mind which follows a sound understanding, 
and not among those who are shouted about in droves, and come 
at the call of a herdsman. It is our habit to address the under- 
standings of the people with the desire and the expectation that 
they will make up their minds for themselves. We feel that truth, 
on whatever subject, whether the liberty wherewith Christ, or the 
liberty wherewith man makes free, is always the gainer when it 
comes to men who will inquire, what are the principles set forth 
for their consideration, what are the facts by which those principles 
are supported, and who will make up their minds by the light of a 
calm understanding. With such men I am more than willing to 
leave the issue of such questions. 

Does any one inquire why we meet in convention ? The object 
of our meeting is comprehensively and justly stated in the call 
which brought us together. It is neither more nor less than " to 



28 

express our sentiments on the subject of slavery." This is the con- 
trolling, the single purpose of our meeting. Our object in express- 
ing our sentiments on that subject is, to throw our united influence 
against a system of oppression which weighs, with insupportable 
heaviness, on a sixth part of our countrymen, a system which 
implicates, corrupts, disgraces and endangers our whole country, 
and which, if not soon destroyed, will bring down upon this nation 
the most calamitous judgments of God. In order to express our 
sentiments faithfully we meet in convention and gather the light of 
each other's minds on the momentous subject. We wish, after due 
interchange of thought, to express our deliberate judgment in the 
most suitable form; and we wish to do this as a body for the same 
reason that other men speak together. It more attracts the public 
mind to what is spoken. That any question seems important to 
many, leads often to inquiry by others into the principles, facts, or 
measures which are set forth as important, but which, if presented 
by an individual, would not be so likely to gain an attentive consid- 
eration. We wish to speak as a body, that in this way our true 
sentiments may be known by those who either doubt what they 
are, or who, by false lights, are persuaded that they are what they 
are not, and who cannot know our sentiments collectively unless 
they are collectively expressed. This is due to them, to ourselves, 
and to the community in which we live. In this way, too, if our 
influence is anything, and worth anything, can we exert it more 
effectually, because more extensively. Some of us are acquainted 
with the fact, from authentic, though not published intelligence, 
that the opinions of the clergy of this State are used, in certain 
parts of the south, to sustain the system of slavery, and as we can- 
not consent to a misapprehension so unjust to ourselves, and, we 
hope, to most of our brethren in this Commonwealth, we wish to 



29 

take this, as the most convenient as well as the most effectual way 
to disabuse the^minds of such as defame us for the support of un- 
limited tyranny. The insinuation, from whatever quarter, whether 
in or out of this hall, that this meeting was called or exists with 
the contemplation of any influence from it, directly or indirectly, in 
favor of any political party, or any political or other aspiration of 
any individual, is unmanly, as being utterly destitute of foundation 
in truth, or of any reasonable ground of suspicion, and can have 
been bred only of rank jealousy, or of that moral debasement which 
can appreciate no worthier motives than its own. 

And now, sir, let me throw a passing glance on the objection 
offered by another member, that if this convention shall express its 
sentiments on the subject of slavery, it will awaken jealousies ! it 
will beget apprehensmis of danger to liberty ! I greatly marvel 
that such an assertion could find its way into this hall ; that it had 
the courage to look this intelligent assembly in the face. Such ob- 
jections are fancies, mere whims. Who, or what must he be in 
whose bosom such jealousy or such fear can find room ? What man 
of sober, honest thought would not blush to say that he entertained 
such jealousy and such apprehension? It is possible that here and 
there an individual may be found by that member, who is willing, 
for base purposes, to scatter seeds of jealousy and discontent ; but 
in a community like this in which we live, let him be assured that, 
if he reap at all, it will be a blighted harvest. What! dangerous 
to liberty to assert the rights of man ! Dangerous to liberty to 
plead for men in chains ! Dangerous to liberty to proclaim liberty 
throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof ! Dangerous 
to liberty to vindicate the principles of universal emancipation ! 
Then, sir, was the Declaration of American Independence danger- 
ous to liberty. Then tell me, I pray you, what miracle has saved 



30 

the liberties of this Commonwealth from the Bill of Rights written 
on the open front of its Constitution? But I dismiss the subject. 
To pursue it were to offer an indignity to this Convention. To 
argue it soberly would suffer to be called in question the intelli- 
gence and the honor of this county. 

I turn to an objection that has somewhat of the semblance of 
truth, but which yet is not to be trusted for its comely form. It is 
said that ministers should let the subject of slavery alone, and 
preach the great principles of the gospel, letting Christianity in this 
unobtrusive way operate on the minds of men, and gradually bring 
about the emancipation of the slaves. Beautiful dream ! Fair 
but unsubstantial vision ! How long must this indirect and grad- 
ual process go on before the work of emancipation shall be done? 
If the past throws any light on the future, these gradations all tread 
backward. Slavery itself is the most formidable hindrance to the 
progress of Christianity, and the more time is given to that deadly 
foe of a moral kingdom, the broader and deeper will be its en- 
trenchments. Just where slavery gets the firmest foothold, just 
there will it most weaken, till it finally displace a religion of good- 
will to men. Slavery coils round the genius of Christianity, and 
if she do not soon strangle it, with a violence of effort, it will crush 
and devour her. Why take a blind and circuitous route ? There 
is nothing zigzag in the path of Christianity. Her eyes look right 
on, and her eyelids look straight before her. Stealth is neither 
her principle nor her power. Her work is not done in a corner. 
When she speaks, she speaks to the point. When she calls sin- 
ners to repentance, she tells them what to repent of. She shews 
to the people their transgressions, and to the house of Jacob their 
sins. She cries aloud and spares not. When she has broken the 
sceptre of any tyrant sin, she has grasped it with decision ; she 



31 

has wrenched it away, and broken it with the strength of her ob- 
vious arm. Without this decision the world had been ruined be- 
yond hope. 

"Why, sir, is the work of emancipation delayed ? Is not slavery 
gaining strength every hour ? Has it not, encouraged by vague 
generalities, been spreading itself, with its legions of wrongs and 
miseries, by night and by day, age after age ? Does not its own 
nature, does not its whole history show the need of strong pressure 
upon it ? Is there not an earnest call to all the friends, and espe- 
cially to the ministers of a holy religion, to proclaim the rights of 
men and denounce the crime of slavery ? And what else stops 
men's breath but the extreme need of speaking out, everywhere, 
their boldest thoughts ? Yes, it is the magnitude of the evil that 
makes men cautious and dumb. It is the natural impudence of 
slavery, become more brazen by indulgence, that makes freedom 
so reluctant and shamefaced. I repeat it, it is the enormity of the 
evil that makes tongues mute that should break forth as thunder. 
It is because slavery holds so many, so widely, so entirely, and so 
habitually in its fierce grasp. If the crime of slavery were less 
magnificent than it is ; if, instead of being spread over thirteen 
States, it covered only the State of Connecticut, or Rhode-Island, or 
even the ten miles square now the nation's emporium of slavery ; 
if the blight of this sin on manhood and its hopes, instead of falling 
on two and a half millions, fell on only twenty thousand of our 
countrymen ; if slavery struck only the body, instead of shedding 
mildew on the soul ; if, instead of being hoary with age, it had 
sprung up but yesterday, all eyes would be bent upon it ; men 
would not be called upon to circumnavigate the globe to wind 
around the unsuspecting monster a thread of gossamer ; they 
Avould snatch the weapons that lie nigh them, even in their hearts ; 



32 

they would pierce it with a storm of arrows ; they would destroy 
it from the land with universal execration. 

The next lion in our way, and which comes up as from the 
swelling - of Jordan, is the Excitement ! We are earnestly admon- 
ished to shun it, lest it devour us. For one, I have no desire to 
encounter it. I would not unnecessarily place myself in its way ; 
but if in the path of duty I meet it, I am told, on the highest au- 
thority, not to give place to it. Besides, is it not of that kind, 
which, if we resist it, will flee from us ? 

I am aware that excitement is, of itself, evidence neither for nor 
against any cause. It is incidental to the movements of ambition 
and of virtue : it may be for or against liberty. We are not to de- 
cide on the merits of any cause by either the excitement or the still- 
ness that accompanies it. An excitement maybe the object of just 
censure or of just commendation ; and a calm may be even more 
fatal than a storm. We are to look at that which is the occasion 
or the object of excitement, before we determine the character of 
the excitement itself. 

The objection which we here meet, is one that is ever met in at- 
tempting to destroy any sin that has endured long and spread wide. 
We look in vain, through the history of man, for any great refor- 
mation which has not encountered opposition. No purity of mo- 
tive can calm it off; no seal of Heaven can gain its respect; no 
measure of beneficence is proof against its malice. Which of the 
prophets was not persecuted for righteousness' sake ? The spot- 
less Son of God was, fiercely and with mortal hatred, accused of 
stirring up the people and perverting the nation. The public pros- 
ecutor, before the corrupt Felix, denounced Paul as a pestilent fel- 
low, a mover of sedition, a ringleader of the sect that was every- 
where spoken against. They who were divinely commissioned to 



33 

reinstate a fallen world, were mobbed for turning it upside down. 
Christianity started on her errand of good-will in a tempest of the 
most malignant passions. From their fierce assault hardly was she 
relieved, before night — her foulest enemy — came down upon her. 
After wandering dimly through ages of darkness, the day scarcely 
broke and she resumed her benign message, when she was again 
assailed by the stormy violence of avarice, licentiousness, and des- 
potism, in their most frantic moods. 

But here I am reminded that the excitement during the progress 
of the Reformation in Europe, was not confined to the enemies of 
Christianity. True. Her friends were deeply, justly, and neces- 
sarily excited. In the struggle of light and darkness, intense anx- 
iety filled all minds. In this eventful crisis of the world's best 
hopes and darkest fears, all Europe stood embattled. Says the 
eloquent historian * of that period, " The human mind roused of a 
sudden, and became inquisitive, mutinous and disdainful of the 
yoke to which it had hitherto submitted." The deep and wide ex- 
citement he calls "a wonderful ferment and agitation of mind." 
He says that " the spirit of innovation broke out in every part of 
Europe with various degrees of violence," and that "even in Spain 
and Italy, symptoms appeared of the same disposition to throw off 
the yoke." 

When opposite principles meet, each with opposite interests un- 
der its protection, the severity of the conflict must be measured by 
the depth of those principles and the amount of those interests, 
present or prospective. Earnestness begets earnestness ; virtue 
becomes sterner by resistance; necessity gives her strength, and 
with it heavier weapons. Inveterate habits, if voluntary, are an- 
other name for inveterate attachments. Great present interests, 

* Robertson. 



34 

real or supposed, do not let go their hold of great sins without a 
"violent struggle. Whatever interest is bred by sin will, 

" when scaring sounds molest, 
Cling close and closer to its mother's breast," 

and strengthen an attachment founded not only in maternal cares, 
but in mutual hopes. While the world gives silent assent to the 
system of slavery, it will last. A sin so strong by the force of na- 
ture and habit, and so confident by the delusions of hope, will yield 
only to the utmost strength of the world's resolute hand. This is 
obvious from the jealousy awakened by the most silent approach to 
it. The slightest touch of its extremity irritates a nerve that reaches 
the seat of life and excites it into an attitude of envenomed resent- 
ment. This excitement will last so long as it sees that the world 
fears it. Hesitation or wide circuits round it will give it courage. 
When it sees, beyond a doubt, that the world hates it and means 
its death, is in earnest and will not flinch, but is rising to bring down 
upon it a blow that will need no second, it will, like every other sin, first 
quail and then flee from off the earth down into its cave of everlast- 
ing darkness. That slavery will forsake even our republican soil 
without deep and Avide excitement will not be looked for by him 
who has read even the most meagre chapter of the human mind. 
To stay in it without excitement is equally impossible. Present 
quiet will only prepare for deeper agitation. The excitement which 
is now so much feared, has already been too long delayed. Come 
it must, sooner or later, in one manner or another ; and if put off 
to the farthest possible point — a distance not very remote — it will 
at last come, on our whole land, in the shape of judgments which 
no wisdom shall be able to shun and no penitence plead off. 

I come now to what is called the constitutional objection. One 



35 

member finds, or thinks he finds, a bar to our proceeding, in the 
Constitution of the United States. He thinks he finds there a na- 
tional political sanction of slavery, — something that forbids a dis- 
turbance of that unblest institution, — something, I suppose, that 
not only should shut up all mouths, but seal up all eyes, quench all 
hearts, and cancel all obligations this side of Mason's and Dixon's 
line. Sir, if our silence were guaranteed by solemn compact, 
if this were the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, and that 
beyond all possible doubt, it would only show that men have adopt- 
ed a constitution of civil government which conflicts with the con- 
stitution of nature, and sets at defiance the government of God. 
Such a constitution of civil government would, so far, be void by a 
prior and immutable law. If slavery were incorporated by closest 
intimacy with the national polity, we should be the more earnestly 
engaged to break up the alliance. If the Constitution had raised a 
bar across the pathway to that sin, that bar should be overleaped. 
With the Constitution for a shield, it should be pierced through the 
Constitution itself. Whatever compact is framed against the law 
of God, however stately and skillful the frame-work, will fall by 
its rottenness, and, if not seasonably abandoned, crush the inter- 
ests it was reared to protect. But where, I ask, is the article, 
where the scrap of the Constitution which either by letter demands, 
or in spirit contemplates the silence which is here enjoined ? The 
cautious words of that wary instrument guard it from all just sus- 
picion of such intent. Instead of giving its sanction to slavery, it 
scrupulously shuns the recognition of its being; it abhors the men- 
tion even of its name. The most that can truly be said is that it 
uses circumlocutions, which, by their large compass, take in slavery 
as actual or possible, as something that might or might not be ; 
that it lays the basis of representation so broad as to include all 



36 

persons comprehended within the indefinite range of such circum- 
locutions; and that legal operation in no State shall infringe the 
claim, legal in any other State, to the service of any of its inhabi- 
tants escaping from it, but shall deliver up such fugitive, " on claim 
of the party to whom such service or labor may be due," silently 
acknowledging, to each State and to all the people, what indeed no 
one would then have been bold enough to question, the liberty of 
opinion and of speech which had been enjoyed and used, with ad- 
vantages then best known, as an inalienable and inestimable birth- 
right. Had an article to shackle that liberty or impede its freest 
gait, been found or suspected in the Constitution as conceived by 
the body in which its lineaments were fashioned, as a hidden un. 
timely birth it had not been. At that day, when the sea of liberty 
was at its flood, the Constitution with such a weight upon it had 
sunk as lead in the mighty waters. We do our fathers wrong, we 
dishonor their well-earned renown, we wrong ourselves out of their 
best legacy, if we entertain, or silently suffer, such suspicion of 
their principles. So far from attempting, or thinking it possible or 
desirable to seal up men's lips, they expected that freemen would 
speak freely on the subject of slavery, and that, from all quarters, 
a harmonious influence would, before this, have been successfully 
exerted to do away, utterly and forever, that which is an unsparing 
war on man, a foul and detestable blot on our country, and an in- 
sufferable affront to God. They spoke freely of slavery, not merely 
as a calamity to be deplored, or as a curse to be dreaded, but as a 
sin to be forsaken ; and, had they anticipated its continuance and 
growth, their anxiety for the nation's conscience would not have 
found quiet till they had secured for the slave deliverance from his 
wrongs. But means of its support and growth which their fore- 
cast did not reach, have risen up to prolong its life and enlarge its 



37 

dominion. It has insinuated itself among new and diversified 
interests of business ; it has entwined itself more closely with the 
hopes of ambition ; it has glided into new and unthought of terri- 
tory ; it has wreathed its folds round states deemed the mightiest 
of the free ; it has been suffered to bask in the sunshine of the 
Constitution, and at this moment 

"hope elevates and joy 
Brightens its crest," 

as it eagerly looks into the Eden* of the new world, and waits to 
beguile freedom of her pureness and drive her a hopeless exile 
from her fresh abode. 

The last objection which I shall notice, comes to us with an as- 
pect claiming our attention and pleading for our sympathy. It 
wears a mingled look of troubled solemnity and importunate depre- 
cation : it expresses the alarm that such action as the call of this 
Convention contemplates, will, by feeding the flame which the love 
of freedom has already enkindled, and repelling the wonted emo- 
tions of southern good-will, rend asunder the Union, and plunge 
the hopes of the country into the awful chasm which such convul- 
sion shall open in the midst of us. This is the substance of the 
boding objection to which the purpose of our meeting is importuned 
to give way. It is worthy of grave consideration. Coming to us 
with the air and tone of afflicted sincerity, it should receive our 
most attentive regard. If we may not yield that instant compliance 
which would at once change its countenance, let us at least say, 
Come, let us reason together. I would meet it by the inquiry, 
whether this anxiety is bred of reason, or of imagination ? Comes 
it from a consideration of the weakness of freedom and the power 

* A name sometimes used to describe Texas. 



38 

of slavery ? May not the conviction have been wrought in the 
mind by a willingness to find duty in some other path than that 
where God has placed it in our way, and by a conscious fear of a 
spirit which raves the loudest when it most feels the need of over- 
powering its own convictions of guilt ; a cloud of wind which low- 
ers the darker because its shrivelled hand grasps no bolt of thun- 
der ? Has the objection comprehended the resources of free, in- 
telligent enterprise and virtue? Has it inquired whether the free 
States alone have not far greater power than belonged to all the 
States which, " to secure the blessings of liberty," formed the 
Union ? Has it thought whether the free States are not, for all 
domestic interests, far more closely associated now than were any 
number of the States when our present national compact was 
framed ? Has it paused to ask whether in the free States there is 
enough of sagacity to profit by the experience of half a century, and 
whether, with that experience, they would not, in case of a sever- 
ance from the rest, remain united with the same essential principles 
of government, and with habitual attachments strengthened by the 
peculiarity of their new condition and relations, by the idendity of 
character which would exist among themselves, and by the discrep- 
ancy of character which would distinguish them from others ? Has 
the objection considered whether States, united by compact, gather 
strength from that accordance of interests which identifies their pol- 
icy and keeps it from sudden and disastrous fluctuations ? Has its 
excited and alarmed imagination left memory so far behind as to 
lose sight of free interests tampered with, periled, and laid prostrate 
by an unsympathising and reckless association ? Has it surveyed 
politically and morally the geography of the free and the slave 
States, in masses and in detail, and cautiously computed their rela- 
tions, tendencies, and probable influence on each other, both pres- 



39 

ent and future ? Has it passed along from the Atlantic shore of 
the Ancient Dominion up the Blue Ridge, and looked down upon 
the eager wants of a large part of the population in the vale which 
it overlooks ? Or, pressing on to the summit of the Atlantic slope, 
has its inquiring eye explored the strong propensities and growing 
power of western Virginia, and wandered onward over the plains 
and along the vales of free-spirited Kentucky ? Has it had 
leisure, in its broad and rapid excursions, to bestow a passing 
glance on those minuter geographical divisions which characterize 
the free States, but which cannot be where slavery thrives, parcel- 
ing out those States into innumerable municipalities, each a min- 
iature republic, with advantages for improvement of every kind, 
physical, intellectual, social, and moral ? Has the scope of its in- 
quiry been wide enough to take in the question, where, or whether, 
the seam can be found which is to be followed in ripping the 
Union, by those who have either ambitiously desired or stoutly 
threatened to unstitch it ? What discovery has it made of the ef- 
fect of a severance on slavery itself? Has it taken the pains to be 
informed whether anything would more certainly work the deliv- 
erance of the slave on the borders of a free territory, and thus 
extend the limits of freedom, than drawing the line of distinct 
national government, and thus marking still more definitely than 
before the contiguous light and shade of opposite systems of policy, 
and exciting a still more jealous attention to freedom's wakeful 
mind, and busy hand, and frugal thrift, and well-requited toil ? 
Has it calmly thought how much the prosperity of states and na- 
tions depends on confidence at home and abroad in the security of 
property, and how surely a rupture of the Union would instantly 
depress all that is deemed property at the south, whether houses 
or lands or chattels of flesh and spirit, and as suddenly enhance 



40 

the value of every rood of soil pressed only by the foot of freedom ? 
Has it narrowly inspected the nature of slavery, and marked the 
certainty with which it stints the revenues of a state by exhausting 
the sources of wealth, and considered how swift is the lapse of time 
which will at last transfer the ownership of the soil to him who 
tills it, and the power of the master into the hand of the slave ? 
Has it ever thought whether the Union and slavery are repellent 
principles, or put the question, how long is it possible, with the ut- 
most forbearance, for freedom and slavery to live together under 
the same government ? Has it counted the liabilities of the free 
States to mingle in the tragic strife which the settled laws of 
Providence will, if slavery is persisted in, bring about, and which 
they are every year silently leading on ? But perhaps even here 
the distant contemplation of the fearful scene has been so shocking 
to the heart that the eye of reason has not been steady enough to 
meet it ? I can easily believe that such an event is too sober to be 
taken into the account, or that the heart's delusive power has 
thrown it to a distance so remote as to make it dimly seen and ap- 
pear too far off to be overtaken by the unseen and silent foot of 
time. I know that the imagination startles and the stoutest heart 
grows faint before the dim outline of such a picture ; but if the 
representation, whether faint or bold, be the image of what will be 
or may be, we should invoke the aid of reason to give us courage to 
look at it with a calm and sober discretion. That is a purblind 
policy which shuns the contemplation of any possible consequences. 
Inevitable evils are not to be kept before the mind any farther than 
is necessary to prepare to suffer them, or to use them for ulterior 
good ; but evils to be avoided, though distant, are to be watched 
with a vigilance proportioned to their magnitude. When called 
upon to consider the subject, the Union is to be looked at not as 



41 

a name, but as a tiling; not for what it lias been, but for what it 
is or is likely to be ; not for its partial, but its general benefits or 
evils ; not for the causes which formed it, but for those which de- 
mand its continuance or its cessation; not for its physical uses 
merely, but for its conjoined moral good, its fitness to secure the 
largest and the most lasting welfare. As the Union should cover 
this broad policy, it should be surveyed with a comprehensive eye. 
It should be looked at by the steady sunlight of just principles, 
and not by the gleam or the glare of flaring passions. 

The inquiries I have put as a key to others, are put to meet an 
assumption, and not for the sake of proving the advantages of a 
dissolution of the Union. I go for no wanton experiment. I pre- 
fer the dead level of safe experience to putting my foot in the dark 
over a possible infinity. Neither will I take for granted the cer- 
tainty or probability of predicted evil either in kind or degree. 
The objection to which queries have been proposed is an assump- 
tion both of the fact of disunion, on a given contingency, and of 
the direction of its consequences. It is fair then, as well as a na- 
tive propensity, to be inquisitive about it. But, with all those free 
inquiries, I am no advocate for unconditional dissolution of the 
Union, or for its separation for slight causes. If it may righteously 
be, let it be, as long as the world standeth; or, at least, let it be till 
between the Atlantic and the Pacific waves its unknown millions 
shall crowd along its countless streams, shall swarm in its capa- 
cious vales, shall teem on its broad and fertile plains, shall shout 
to each other from all its mountains and hills ; till, with God's 
blessing on its free and virtuous principles, its intelligent enter- 
prise and untiring industry, it shall have so multiplied and spread 
the means of social existence that the eye of no single government. 



42 

can overlook the expanse, and the arm of no single power poise 
the mighty burden of its interests. 

But there are bounds to hope and bounds to duty. While we 
bear in mind the price of union ; while we keep steadily before us 
all that we can know of its original necessity, of the wisdom and 
patriotism which devised and framed it, of the mutual concessions 
which effected it, of the forbearance which has refrained from 
harming it, and of the benefits which have cemented it together ; 
while we give wide room to the inbred habit of cherishing the 
Union, neither any nor all of these considerations should keep us 
from seeing whatever else may be seen, or allow us to reverence 
it as the giver of every good and perfect gift. It is but the crea- 
ture, and, however worthy of our esteem and gratitude, is not to be 
worshipped and served as the Creator, God over all. Great bene- 
fits may lead to great sins. There is danger of making too high, 
as well as too low an estimate of worldly good however great, and 
forming from it a standard of duty that, shall not tally with the rule 
of God. 

Doubtless the Union has been the means of great and incalcula- 
ble good. That it has been a means also of great evil is, perhaps, 
not less clear. The good may have far outrun the evil. Be it so. 
It is not therefore the fountain of living waters — it is not therefore 
the standard of truth, or to be preserved at the expense of duty to 
God and of the rights of men. It is not, on account of past servi- 
ces, however great and manifest, to be cherished as the protector 
and participator of wrong, immeasurable but still growing wrong. 
It is not to live that it may guard the rights and support the inter- 
ests of a part of our countrymen, while it mocks the wrongs in- 
flicted, without respite and without stint, on a sixth part of our 



43 

countrymen entitled, by the endowments of the same God, to the 
same benefits which are justly claimed from it by any part of our 
nation. 

The lasting beneficence of a constitution of civil government is 
not to be measured by the breadth of territory which it covers ; by 
the denseness of the population which stands on it ; by the com- 
merce whose bright wings glance over the waves of every sea, or 
flutter in every haven of the world ; by the din of industry at every 
waterfall ; by the herds and flocks of unnumbered hills ; by the 
villages that rise, like exhalations, in the wilderness ; by the avenues 
of nature and art which interlace the broad land ; or by the intelli- 
gence which beams out of every eye. There is a strength in the 
heart of man, given by the Spirit of God, mightier than the shields 
of the mighty ; there is an armor of righteousness on the right 
hand and on the left brighter than the gleam of millions of bayonets, 
and more potent and terrible than the blaze and the thunder of ten 
thousand cannon ; there is a wealth in upright hearts, which, in 
peace, is more a nation's good, and, in war, is more a nation's sinew 
than all the coffers of countless revenues ; there is a wisdom from 
above, full of mercy and of good fruits, without partiality and with- 
out hypocrisy, which denies that the wisdom of this world is power, 
and which alone can say, " I have strength."* This wisdom, the 
fear of God, the knowledge of the holy, is better than weapons of 
war : length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand 
riches and honor ; her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her 
paths are peace. In a union of upright hearts a nation cannot but 
prosper till the constitution of nature shall be broken up — till God 
shall forsake his holy government. In such a union there is a 
power that puts to flight the armies of the aliens — an invincibility 

* Proverbs, viii, 1 I. 



44 

before which the world cowers with conscious weakness. In such 
hearts there is a majesty with which unjust constitutions and laws 
intermeddle not ; to which righteous compacts and enactments bow 
as to the spirit that girds them with strength. When the genius 
of a nation is a spirit of righteousness it will bring her to honor ; 
when of injustice, to shame and everlasting contempt. 

As I would not overrate, I would not undervalue the Union. 
With me it has been an object of strong attachment. Whoever has 
loved it much, none has loved it more. The fervor and constancy 
of this love are the effect of early attachment and habitual contem- 
plation of its worth. I had not thought that so much could be 
done which threatens to chill an affection so warm. But that 
which takes not its rise from blind impulse is not likely to continue 
by it. That which is raised and supported by perception of worth, 
will of course fall when that support gives way. As I would cher- 
ish the Union while it serves " to establish justice, insure domestic 
tranquillity, provide for the common defence, and secure the bles- 
sings of liberty," so I would repudiate the Union when it fails to 
attain all or any of these objects. I can view with calmness the 
separation of States whose bond of union is a chain of slavery of 
the tongue, of the press, and of the heart's best power. I can say, 
if such are to be the practical conditions of union let the Stales be 
severed: write a bill of divorcement from the bond of an impure 
wedlock. If such are, in effect, the terms of union, let it fall asun- 
der : let the dissolved elements re-unite into separate masses ac- 
cording to their affinities for freedom or for slavery. If it has come 
to this, that the price of union is to be dumb when God calls for a 
voice, to be silent when the groans of millions in bondage fall on the 
hearts of millions of freemen ; if we may not speak out our minds 
against the most horrible atrocity with which earth is afflicted, let 



45 

not the price be paid : it is spending the treasures of the heart for 
that which satisfieth not. In such alternative let the Union expire, 
though the giving up of the ghost be with a nation's agony. It is 
>ut the separation of corruptible dust from incorruptible spirit. 
The clay will dissolve, but the spirit will join a new and glorious 
body : it shall go forth in freedom, no more clogged with its weight 
of sin : it shall return with songs and everlasting joy. 

Should the discussion of slavery, here and elsewhere, be fol- 
lowed by a dissolution of the Union, the responsibility will rest on 
that which demands the discussion, but which cannot bear it. 
Should the Union be lost, principle will be safe. Nor will disun- 
ion stop the work of emancipation. It will quicken it. It will 
give new advantages for carrying on the work. Should sinful 
passions stretch a belt of fire between the free and the slave States, 
ii'otn the Atlantic to the Pacific shore, truth would overleap it, and 
time would quench it. The limits of states and empires can nei- 
ther hem in nor shut out light. The age, the condition of the 
world, its business, its new and swifter pursuits, its nearer and 
ever-moving intercourse, will go forward and not backward, bearing 
with them new constitutions and relations of society. The move- 
ments of God's providence are bringing nations together to see eye 
to eye and speak face to face. Mind can never more be contra- 
band to mind. To attempt, by disunion, to keep a part of the 
world from the rest and to shroud off the sun of righteousness from 
its conscience, will be as keeping off, by disunion, the light of day 
when the sun shineth in his strength. 

I cannot conclude without expressing my astonishment that any 
attempt should be made to hinder the freest utterance of our senti- 
ments, the loudest burst of indignant hearts against the foul crime 
of slavery. If in New-England, where Freedom has loved to dwell, 



46 

and where, as the almoner of God's bounty, she has quenched the 
people's thirst from the smitten rock, and made them suck honey 
out of the flinty rock, — if, in the heart of this free Commonwealth, 
the ministers of Heaven's word shall, from a blind policy, a faint 
heart, or a mistaken sense of duty, refuse to remonstrate against 
slavery in our land, one would think that nature itself would speak 
out; that the forests would murmur and sigh ; that the rocks would 
cry out from the mountains; that the hearts of these hills would 
throb with audible pulsations ; that these vallies would wail with 
unsleeping echoes ; and the broad atmosphere be filled with the 
cries of Freedom, in agony for the crushed and bleeding slave, and 
in sadness over the children she has nourished and brought up, but 
which have rebelled against her. 

But I trust that our coming together is a true response to the 
call that has summoned us hither. I trust that the ministers of a 
spiritual kingdom are met to testify of slavery that it is preemi- 
nently an evil work, an abominable thing which the Lord hateth. 
I trust that from this Convention a solemn call will go forth that 
shall meet and mingle with the voices of our brethren in other 
parts of the country, to wake a nation sleeping over its grave, to 
startle it with the nearness of its everlasting destruction, and to 
join with the voice of nature and of God in the rescue of humanity 
from its unrelenting foe. 



54 W £ 



AGENCY OFFICE. 



ISAAC KNAPP, 25 CORNHILL, 
BOSTON, 

Is Agent for all the publications of the American Anti- 
Slavery Society. 

The price of the Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine 
is reduced to $3 00 per annum, making it the cheapest 
publication in the United States. Each number will con- 
tain at least 250 pages, making two volumes of 500 pages 
per annum, of the size and quality of the North American 
Review. About 150 pages will be devoted to the discus- 
sion of Slavery and topics intimately related to it. At 
least 50 pages will be occupied by a minute and condensed 
record of facts and events, both foreign and domestic, 
which go to form the history of the abolition movement. 
The remaining pages will be open to uncontroversial liter- 
ature. Since slaveholders have confessed that the litera- 
ture of the world is against them, it is not doubted that 
this department will receive contributions from the best 
sources. Extensive arrangements have already been made 
to fill the pages of the Magazine. More than fifty writers, 
favorably known to the public, have promised contribu- 
tions regularly or occasionally. 

Subscriptions and payment will be received at the Anti- 
Slavery Office, Boston, where the numbers will be deliv- 
ered free from postage to all who pay in advance. 



I. Knapp is also agent for the following publications : 
The Friend of Man, Utica, N. Y., edited by William 
Goodell — The Pennsylvania Freeman, Philadelphia, ed- 
ited by J. G. Whittier — The Philanthropist, Cincinnati, 
Ohio — The Colored American, New- York city, Rev. J. 
E. Cornish editor. 

Those who subscribe and pay in advance for " Human 
Rights" or " Slave's Friend," in Boston, will receive them 
free from expense for transportation. 








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